I grew up within the Nineteen Eighties in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri—a sporty child who cherished nothing greater than enjoying striker for my elementary faculty soccer workforce, the Scorching Photographs. However my sports activities heroes? They have been all males. Until it was the Olympics, and Mia Hamm was scoring objectives and main the workforce to gold, then you definately rooted for the fellows. Even the women on my highschool basketball workforce who went on to play in school understood that their dream ended after commencement.
Now, younger ladies—and all youngsters—could have a dramatically completely different expertise. The Kansas Metropolis Present of the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League is a part of that story. The workforce will play in CPKC Stadium, the primary on the earth constructed for girls, starting this month.
Two of the workforce’s 4 house owners are ladies. The primary is Brittany Mahomes, a former professional soccer participant for a membership in Iceland, who’s married to NFL Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. The second, Angie Lengthy, is a KC native and former All-American rugby participant who co-owns a profitable Kansas Metropolis–primarily based mutual fund. (Her husband and enterprise associate, Chris, can be a Present co-owner. So is Patrick.) In reality, a lot of the undertaking leads—from common supervisor to go of development—are ladies.
The newly appointed feminine president of the group, Raven Jemison, climbed the company ranks of the NHL and NBA however was offered on the KC Present position after one dialog with the Longs, whom she calls visionaries. Jemison says she made the transfer to “construct the legacy that all of us need to have in our careers…realizing that we’ve made a distinction.” She provides, “we wish [the KC Current] to be the instance of what occurs whenever you spend money on ladies, spend money on ladies’s sports activities, and really take a stand and say, ‘That is what’s potential.’”
Each feminine Present government and participant I spoke to whereas reporting this piece was an athlete rising up. And, like me, their reminiscence banks overflow with main moments in males’s skilled sports activities…whereas their female-specific recollections stemmed from their very own lives, centered on the courts and fields they performed on with their teammates. Once I requested them to determine their childhood sports activities heroes? All of them named males.
“The variety of occasions [in high school] I wore hand-me-down jerseys from the boys’s workforce,” says Angie, who was a star soccer participant as a teen. “You find it irresistible, it’s your workforce, and also you like to compete. However a stadium for girls adjustments the whole lot.” No extra hand-me-down stadiums.
Contemplate this: In 1985, the gamers on America’s first ladies’s nationwide soccer workforce, the 85ers, got a $10 every day stipend once they traveled to Italy for Mundialito, their first worldwide event. As for his or her uniforms? The workforce minimize up and sewed logos onto their “jerseys” (hand-me-down males’s apply shirts) the night time earlier than flying out.
From left: Vanessa Dibernardo, Hanna Glas, Claire Lavogez, Michelle Cooper and Gabrielle Robinson stroll in the direction of their new locker room.
Loads has modified since then. In 2024, there may be reliable fan fervor round ladies’s sports activities. Extra individuals tuned in to observe American tennis star Coco Gauff win the US Open championship final September than watched the boys’s finals. This yr, College of Iowa basketball star Caitlin Clark smashed NCAA scoring information and stuffed arenas—and delighted professional sports activities followers when she declared for the WNBA draft. However it bears repeating that it wasn’t so way back that issues have been completely different. Not too long ago, considered one of Angie’s 4 youngsters (her eldest daughter, a proficient volleyball participant) requested her mother if she’d dreamed of being an expert athlete when she grew up. Which…no, Angie replied, as a result of “ladies didn’t try this.”
Investing in 75 acres of land plus development—at a value of about $200 million—to construct a stadium means that the current swell of curiosity in ladies’s sports activities isn’t just a fad, however a motion. The emotional impression it is going to have on the ladies who performed for the 85ers? For ladies like Angie? For ladies like me? Immeasurable. For younger ladies and boys like my 8- and 12-year-old sons, who attended the Present’s residence opener with me on March 16? It can, I hope, really feel regular that skilled feminine athletes have a facility of their very own.
“The stadium is simply going to proceed to deliver extra visibility to [women’s sports] and convey extra followers into these doorways,” says Kristen Hamilton, a KC Present ahead. “And it gained’t even simply be younger ladies, but additionally boys who’re going to say we’re their heroes. That feels surreal to me.”
However all of that is greater than merely breaking the established order. “There’s precise math behind it,” Angie says. “Which transcends something to do with ladies’s sports activities.” In different phrases, that is no charity undertaking. It’s each the correct factor to do and an effective way to become profitable for the workforce and for Kansas Metropolis.
Aerial view of the stadium.
The potential monetary upside created by the stadium is big.
The Present will get its identify from the Missouri River, which runs alongside the state border between Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, and Kansas Metropolis, Kansas. The house owners noticed a novel alternative for the workforce to personal a stadium and took on private monetary threat to make it occur. (Development was completely privately financed by the house owners.) The Longs traveled the world researching stadiums for inspiration and broke floor within the fall of 2022. The enterprise has moved at warp velocity, rocketing from conception to completion in three years. (A close-by coaching facility, together with weight rooms and two grass and one turf discipline, was additionally constructed.)
And the house owners considered the whole lot, from eco-conscious design to fashionable facilities and high-tech safety. Each one of many 11,500 seats is inside 100 ft of the pitch. There are best-in-class sustainability and accessibility options, views of the downtown KC skyline and Missouri River, and a cashless game-day buying expertise.
Beforehand, the Present rented time on fields at excessive faculties and universities and within the stadium of the boys’s hometown MLS workforce, Sporting KC. The economics of proudly owning your personal facility—slightly than renting time in one other model’s—creates large potential upside for the workforce. Past saving lease cash, “we will generate $20 million [total] a yr in income,” Angie says.
That huge quantity is feasible as a result of myriad income streams can be found whenever you personal your personal stadium. Sponsorship offers. Fan shops promoting workforce gear and merchandise. Naming rights on the stadium gates. Parking income. And sure, ticket gross sales: The Present’s season tickets offered out months earlier than opening day, a optimistic signal that the Longs’ calculus is spot-on. Plus, the workforce makes its personal schedule, slightly than puzzling their residence video games round one other workforce’s, which suggests video games could be performed throughout primetime on weeknights and weekends. “We spent lots of time on the financial mannequin. Amenities are an unbelievable solution to unlock so many income alternatives that profit everyone,” says Chris. “They profit the workforce, they profit the gamers, they profit the group.”
The house owners plan to leverage the ability within the low season too: highschool championships, live shows, probably even World Cup coaching exercises. This all means extra inspiring occasions for Kansas Citians to take pleasure in…and more money for the Present. Earnings shall be reinvested, serving to with recruiting, stadium-related prices, and real-estate improvement adjoining to the ability. It can additionally fund leveled-up teaching and important help for the gamers.
New investments in damage prevention will assist maintain the gamers wholesome.
Final season, the workforce endured quite a few accidents, contributing to their standing close to the underside of the league. “We’d like everyone on the sphere; we’d like everyone accessible,” says Elizabeth Ball, a KC Present defender. “So whenever you’re known as on, you’re able to go.” Now, as of the 2024 preseason, the workforce has employed new staffers—heads of medical, diet, and rehabilitation, plus psychologists, trainers, and coaches for power, conditioning and efficiency—and partnered with the College of Kansas Well being System to observe every participant, holding them wholesome and stopping accidents.
Somewhat than a blanket routine for your complete squad, individualized plans for coaching, restoration, and diet are created for every participant. Not too long ago, the gamers started carrying coronary heart charge displays whereas coaching to assist medical workers flag any potential points. Additionally they full a every day wellness questionnaire, offering holistic suggestions on their psychological, emotional, and bodily standing. And the gamers already really feel the distinction. “After we got here in proper earlier than preseason, it was loopy what number of workers members there have been,” says Ball. “We’re standing out on the sphere, and I’m like, ‘There are extra of them than us!’”
These upgrades are badly wanted in ladies’s sports activities. Knee accidents (just like the dreaded ACL tear), for one, disproportionately have an effect on feminine athletes for numerous hormonal, anatomical, and biomechanical causes. The house owners have additionally invested in injury-prevention infrastructure, forgoing turf, which is correlated with increased incidence of damage, for more-expensive grass, and putting in heaters beneath the sphere to maintain the floor gentle even on the coldest spring days.
“Whereas the funding within the infrastructure and the workers is the primary of its form, all of us hope it’s not the final,” says Camille Ashton, the workforce’s common supervisor. “I believe the brand new customary we’re setting in what these skilled gamers expertise and the way they need to be handled is actually monumental.”
A mural reveals Kansas Metropolis pleasure close to the stadium entrance.
Kansas Metropolis pleasure is on full show.
As a KC native, I can affirm that we love our tiny however mighty midwestern metropolis. The persons are form, the tradition is vibrant, the meals is superior. (Barbecue FTW!) And it will likely be entrance and heart on the new stadium. There will even be vegan and gluten-free fare on supply, a boon for followers with particular dietary wants. Nothing used for meals service–beverage containers, plates, cutlery, and so on.–will develop into trash. As an alternative, it will likely be collected, washed, and reused at future video games. The house owners have made energy-efficient choices at each flip and are making use of for LEED certification, the main sustainability award.
The aesthetic and vibes will even replicate Kansas Metropolis’s historical past and tradition, together with its Twenties jazz-town roots. “Our essential goal was that we didn’t need to create a design that could possibly be picked up and positioned anyplace,” says stadium design lead Christina Franklin, head of inside design on the native structure agency Generator Studio. “We thought of what defines lots of the architectural design and inside design of a few of our oldest Kansas Metropolis buildings, and we built-in these components inside the stadium.” The result’s artwork deco moments, akin to checkerboard detailing, in addition to fishtail patterns, plus art work by native KC artists.
Gamers share a second in entrance of the newly completed Title IX set up.
Followers will discover different Easter eggs on the stadium too.
Like the enduring Title IX set up. A wall embellished with the phrases of that historic laws—which handed in 1972 as an addendum to the 14th Modification to stop sex-based discrimination at faculties—is located between the locker rooms and discipline. The groups will stroll straight in entrance of it as they enter the sphere.
“Each participant who comes and performs in that stadium, each little child, could have a totally completely different expectation now of what it means to be an expert feminine athlete,” says Angie. “As soon as one thing like that is constructed…you’ll be able to’t unsee it.” She invited the 85ers to the Present’s residence opener. Fifteen of the 17 attended and acquired to witness a brand new chapter in ladies’s athletics.
Even the Present’s locker room is purpose-built. It’s oval-shaped so each participant has an equitable place inside the house. The athletes will really feel the gravitas once they stroll inside and see their workforce emblem, their names on the lockers, their red-and-teal colours.
The colours deliver again recollections of my favourite pair of Converse high-tops, which I daringly laced up again at my Catholic elementary faculty. The intense teal hue broke the foundations of our strict gown code and landed me within the principal’s workplace. I nonetheless keep in mind how laborious it was to take care of the exhilaration, and subsequent anguish, of pushing the boundaries after which being instructed, No, you’ll be able to’t try this. After faculty, I hustled my little coronary heart out at soccer apply with my Scorching Photographs teammates as a result of on the sphere, I felt as if something and the whole lot have been potential. For me, these hues will eternally characterize ardour and chance. And shortly, the identical shall be true for a brand new era of youngsters.
Liz Plosser is the editor-in-chief of Girls’s Well being. She’s been passionately reporting and enhancing well being, health, diet, sexual well being, and psychological well being content material for her whole profession. She has a 360-degree outlook on the wellness world, having labored throughout platforms at print magazines (Self, Cosmopolitan), with video (CosmoBody), overseeing content material and technique for manufacturers (Canyon Rach, SoulCycle) and as SVP of Content material within the digital house (Effectively+Good).
Supply: Women’s Health Mag